Sorting Ba's Things

When my mother-in-law, who was called Ba ('mother'), died, I wrote a series of poems about it. I've posted two of them earlier: Journeying and Uses for Wood. Here's another one:

Sorting Ba's Things
Sorting through cupboards in Ba's old room,
I tugged a stuck drawer open,
pulled the string of a small cloth bag, to find
pink and white grins of outgrown false teeth;
in another bag, spectacles, blinking in the light.

And there were her gods and puja implements -
incense sticks, oil lamps with wicks she rolled
out of cotton and ghee, small statues of Krishna,
elephant-headed Ganesh, Lakshmi the wealth-giver,
the book of slokas she chanted every day.

Sunday mornings she watched Mahabharat on TV -
a miracle in every episode - gods' stately progress
through the air, seated on lotus flowers;
towering demons with big bellies and walrus fangs
who laughed "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" just before
a hurled fire-discus struck them between the eyes
and they toppled like trees.
Sometimes I sat to watch with her,
and she would say, "Did you see that?!"

Dear Ba, by the end all the sets of teeth hurt you,
you wore them only for photographs,
and the glasses could not make the slokas clear.

May Lakshmi keep you beside her
on the silky petals of her pink lotus.
May Ganesh feed you the sweet ladoo he holds.
And when you are sated and sleepy,
may Krishna soothe you with the song of his flute.

Several Things

I haven't seen the new film Alexander; to me, Alexander will always look like Prithviraj Kapoor (founder of a Bollywood dynasty which still continues, in its third generation), who played him in the film Sikandar (1941) -- Sikandar being the Indian version of Alexander. The legs may not be in style today, but look at that face!




It's Spring again, at least theoretically, and time for the Basant festival in North India and Pakistan. Chapati Mystery is celebrating Basant Week: "A bit of history today. String preparation and type of kites tomorrow. Next, rules of engagement..."

(my Basant post from 2003 is here: Kati Patang)


Via Wood s Lot: Edward Burtynsky - Shipbreaking images: wonderful photographs of shipbreaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh:



(See also an article about shipbreaking in the Indian state of Gujarat by Dilip D'Souza)


(forgot where I saw it) -- on BBC's Asian Network, vote for the top 40 Hindi film soundtracks of all time -- with clips of all the songs


From The Hindu: Fading notes: an article about the making of reeds for the south Indian relative of the oboe (and the north Indian shehnai), the nadaswaram. As with most traditional crafts, the reed-makers hardly earn enough to live on. The painstaking process of preparing the reeds was fascinating to me.